was not apparent in his demeanour. He was probably around the same age as myself, if the number of cuts and scars decorating his face was anything to judge by. Certainly he looked no younger. There was a hardness in his eyes, and a firmness in his stance that gave the impression of someone who didn’t know the meaning of defeat. He dressed not in mail but in an archer’s leather corselet, reinforced with iron studs that would deflect a glancing blow but little more.
‘Have you come to parley or just to gawp?’ he asked.
‘I’ve come to talk,’ I answered.
‘Then talk.’
His voice was strangely measured and even, not at all what I had been expecting after everything I’d heard about him.
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘You know you can’t run. We can easily outpace you and pick you off, one by one, until you decide to surrender.’
Hereward shrugged. ‘We might not be able to run but we can still fight. You’ll run out of arrows eventually and I doubt your men have the same stomach for a fight as mine. We have numbers on our side.’
I forced a laugh, and hoped it sounded convincing. ‘You think we’re the only men that King Guillaume has sent?’
‘You tell me.’
‘There’s a whole raiding-party four hundred strong following behind us,’ I said, hoping that he would fall for the lie. ‘King Guillaume is scouring the marshes with fire and sword to try to find you. He has put a price on your head of one hundred silver marks, and he doesn’t care whether you’re brought to him alive or dead.’
It sounded believable enough that even I was convinced. With any luck he would swallow the morsel whole, and we wouldn’t have to risk another battle.
‘What, then?’ Hereward countered. ‘You would have me give myself up to you?’
‘That’s right. If you do that, and freely offer your submission, then the king might just be willing to show you clemency. There is no other choice, if you want to live.’
He snorted. ‘There is always a choice.’ He turned his back and made to return to the shield-wall.
‘You can’t escape your fate,’ I called after him. ‘Your rebellion is finished. The Isle belongs to us. Your allies have forsaken you, as has your cherished saint, Æthelthryth. She heard your prayers and she laughed at them. She spits on your dreams. Do you hear me?’
He rounded on me. ‘What would you know of St Æthelthryth?’
‘Only what Godric tells me,’ I replied. ‘To think that the feared Hereward, the scourge of the fenlands, was reduced to begging for a woman’s help to win his wars!’
‘Godric?’ he asked, frowning. ‘You mean Morcar’s nephew?’
‘Didn’t you know?’
I called the boy’s name and he came forward, tentatively at first, but I jerked my head and he quickened his pace.
‘Were it not for him, we might never have taken Elyg,’ I said. ‘This is the one who brought about your downfall, who brought an end to your rebellion.’
‘You were the one who betrayed us?’ Hereward asked Godric. His eyes were colder than steel on a winter’s morning. ‘I always knew that your uncle had the tongue of a serpent. I ought to have guessed you would be no different.’ He sneered as he gestured at the scabbard that hung from the boy’s belt. Godric had come from Alrehetha without a weapon, and so I’d given him the sword with the emerald in the pommel that had belonged to Thurcytel. ‘That’s a big blade for a child to carry. You’d best take care that you don’t cut yourself.’
The boy’s cheeks reddened, but he said nothing.
‘You always were a worthless turd in my eyes,’ Hereward went on. ‘How can you call yourself a thegn when you don’t even know how to wield the weapons with which to defend your lands?’
‘Enough of your squawking,’ I said to Hereward.
He ignored me. ‘Even now you cower behind the protection of these Frenchmen. Why do you let him speak for you? Have you lost your voice, or just your wits?’ He spat. ‘Your mother was a whore, and the daughter of a whore besides, but even so she would have drowned you at birth had she known the disgrace you’d bring upon your kin and your countrymen. Because of you, our one last chance to regain our birthright is lost. This once-proud kingdom has fallen, we find ourselves ruled by foreign tyrants, and it is your fault. Do you hear me? You did this, Godric of Corbei!’
‘No!’ the boy cried, and before I could do anything he spurred his palfrey forward, at the same time drawing his sword.
‘Godric!’ I shouted, but it was too late. The boy had allowed the elder Englishman to goad him to anger, and now he would suffer.
Some of Hereward’s men started forward, but he raised his shield-hand to forestall them, while with the other he let his helmet fall and drew his seax. A smile spread across his face as he took his stance, lowering his blade-point towards the ground, leaving the upper half of his body open as an invitation to attack. Godric accepted without hesitation, roaring with rage as he swung at Hereward’s head, but his foe had been anticipating such a move. He ducked beneath Godric’s blade, at the same time whipping his own up and flashing the edge across the palfrey’s hindquarters, tearing through flesh and sinew. The animal buckled and the boy fell, and he was still clinging desperately with one hand to the reins when he hit the ground.
‘Stop this,’ I shouted above the horse’s screams. Hereward stood over the boy with his seax pointed at the skin beneath his chin. Godric’s sword lay just a little beyond grasp, but the fall must have knocked the wind out of him, or else hurt him worse than I had thought, since he seemed unable to reach it — for all the good that it would have done him at that moment.
‘Stop?’ Hereward asked, although he did not take his eyes from the boy. ‘Why should I stop? Not only has he betrayed us, he’s tried to kill me too.’
‘He couldn’t kill you if you were weaponless and missing both your legs,’ I said. ‘You’ve had your fun, so now let him go. He’s worth nothing to you.’
‘Please,’ Godric said weakly, and let out a cough. ‘Spare me, p-please, I beg of you.’
Hereward kicked him in the ribs. It didn’t seem to me an especially hard kick, but it was enough to make the boy cry out in agony and bend double as he rolled over, clutched at his side and cursed all at the same time.
‘I hardly touched you, weakling,’ Hereward growled. Disdainfully he spat at Godric before at last he turned to face me. ‘Are you so scared to fight me that you have to send whelps like him to do your work? Don’t insult-’
He didn’t get the chance to finish. In one movement Godric’s hand had found the hilt of his weapon and brought the blade around, aiming at the back of his opponent’s legs, and I saw that all that howling and swearing and writhing had been but a ruse.
Hereward gave a yell as the point slashed across his ankle. A glancing blow, it seemed, but the lank-haired Englishman fell to his knees. Straightaway his retainers started forward. Godric scrambled to his feet, took one glance at them and another at Hereward, perhaps thinking to finish him, but instead he froze. For, despite his injured leg, Hereward was struggling to his feet, his teeth clenched and his eyes wild.
‘Bastard,’ Hereward said, and swung at the boy, but it was a wild stroke that missed by a hand’s breadth, and suddenly he was off balance, staggering, hobbling, sliding on the mud. ‘Bastard!’
And I saw a chance to end this.
Summoning all the breath in my chest, I gave a wordless roar, and in that roar was all the anger and frustration of the last few weeks. I charged forward, trusting that the others would be behind me. Hereward heard me coming, and despite his injured ankle managed to turn just in time to fend off my strike. Steel shrieked against steel as our blades met, but then I was riding on, leaving him for those behind me to finish. I crashed into the first of Hereward’s men before he could so much as level his spear. Iron clattered upon limewood as he fell beneath Fyrheard’s hooves. Like a river the battle-joy was flowing, carrying me with it as I struck out on both sides with shield-boss and sword-point. Men must have been shouting, screaming, yelping in pain, howling in anguish as their friends fell before their eyes, but all I remember hearing is the sound of my own breathing and the beating of my heart in my breast and the blood pounding behind my eyes. I rammed the steel home into the throat of the next man and then battered the flat of the blade across the nasal-guard of the one after him, slicing his cheek open, biting into his skull, sending teeth and fragments of bloodied bone flying.
‘No mercy!’ I shouted.
